of Fact and Fiction
by grammar.grammarian
Summary: A series of vignettes and oneshots inspired by lovely lyrics by Bones' brother in law. It's perfect, don't deny it. Many characters, many genres; primarily set up to current events some older . Updated at will.
1. And when I see you

**A/N: This here's an odd little collection of vignettes and musings based on our favorite characters and a lovely song. In all, this story will comprise of a oneshot for each section of lyrics from said song, and the entire song will be accounted for in lyrical order. They will be from differing points of view, in different tenses and styles, and about different things. Most will be very vague in the way of any sort of timeline, fairly inconsequential in their effect on any major story points, and typically lighthearted. I hope they elicit at least a small grin.**

**The song is "_A Lack of Color_", by Death Cab for Cutie. It's adorable-ness never gets old and the somewhat recent revelations regarding the lead singer's marriage to Zooey Deschanel makes it ever more fitting, I think. I really like irony.**

**I own creative rights over neither the show nor the song. (But it is a really lovely song and you should look it up if you're unfamiliar.)  
**

* * *

_**And when I see you, I really see you upside down**_

Hardly 8:30 am and Special Agent Seeley Booth was already ready to call it a day. A really, really _long_ day. Thusly, he reasoned with himself, it was the _logical_ thing to do, to be a little apprehensive about stopping by the Jeffersonian to pick up some paperwork from his partner. _Because_, he thought to himself, _let's face it: I love the woman to death _(really)_, but it's hit or miss whether a given moment falls more into the category of 'love', or 'death'_.

He had never before met anyone who could so easily cause him the desire to simultaneously smash his face to hers in a violently passionate kiss and drive his government-issued ride off the nearest cliff face. Either way, it seemed violence worked its way into their equation. _Does that make me a bad person?_ He shook his head. _Two strong personalities make--_

His train of thought derailed (violently, of course) at the sight of his partner's office. He paused his brisk walk then, trying to make sense of the sight he was taking in.

"She's been doing that all morning."

Booth jumped at the proximity with which Zack Addy's voice had just made its way to his ear.

"Uh, personal space, there, Zack-o."

"Sorry Agent Booth, but I was just trying to analyze the markings here--"

Booth stepped away from the examination table he hadn't quite realized he had stopped to lean on. "Oh, sorry."

He paused as if to ponder something, then continued, "Uh, Zack, what exactly is she.... _doing_?"

"I'm... not exactly sure. She mentioned something about the effect of nerve pressure on ocular imagery and asked not to be disturbed."

Without paying the young scientist any further mind, Booth strode off toward his ever surprising partner.

"She _definitely_ asked not to be disturbed..." Zack's attempt to call after him went unheeded by Booth's determined ears.

"Unh-huh." He mumbled back; then, "Bones! Bones... what are you--"

"Shh, Booth. I'm concentrating."

"Uh--"

"SHH!"

She was sitting-- well, more or less. In practical terms, he supposed, it was indeed a sitting position; back on the seat cushions and ass on the backrest of her office couch, feet in the air, head hanging toward the floor, hair splayed everywhere. He had a hard time not laughing at the sight of it, but knowingly bit his tongue for fear of having his whole head bitten off instead. He sidled over and stood with his back to the couch, leaning forwards in an attempt to level his face with hers, and tried again.

"Okay, but Bones... what are you _doing_?"

She sighed, and lifted her head slightly to better look at him.

"You're upside down, Booth."

_Well, that much is obvious. _"Yes, Bones, I am. As are you."

"No, no, Booth... When I look at you... at anything, really, you... it, is upside down. The ocular lens is singular; as such, it transposes everything we see to project, as we know it, upside down onto the retina."

"Oh, no. Please tell me this isn't going to become one of those intense existential, "down is up and right is really left" things..."

"What?"

"It's just that-- nevermind Bones, it's just that I'm 99% sure I don't see things the wrong way."

"Well the brain transposes it back."

_As if that's as obvious as--_ "Wait, wait. If this little, erm... quandary is already handled by your frontal lobe then _why_ are you upside down?"

"Occipital."

"What?"

"The ocular nerve connects to the occipital lobe."

_And the leg bone connects to the hip bone. _"That's great, Bones. I thought you didn't _do_ soft tissue?"

She shrugged. "Eh. I dated a brain surgeon, once."

_Of course you did. And I dated a fucking rocket scientist. _"Right. And what part of the brain explains your current position?"

"I _do_ heart Huckabees, Booth." A cheeky half grin crept across her face. "Well that and... my back was sore. I was stretching it out."

Seeley Booth couldn't help but smile. _And I nearly questioned my apprehension coming in._

* * *

_**Just a quick second note-- the reference at the end is to a movie called "I heart Huckabees", which is a very zany and over-the-top collection of interweaving plots about people having existential crises. It's worth your time if for no other reason than Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman play a pair of "existential investigators" (and well, let's face it.. it's Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman. 'nuff said.), and, well, Jude Law.**_

_**Spelling and grammar errors are heavily monitored by me, myself, and I-- if you wanna join the force please, by all means, point out any issues you see.**_


	2. But my brain knows better

**AN: I have a few of these little moments pre-written and it's just a matter of digitizing them, and pacing myself so that you, my lovely readers, do not become inundated with the first pile and then have to wait forever for the rest. **

**Once again, I do not own the show, I do not own the song. I do, however, hold complete ownership over my verbosity and excitable use of the common comma.  
**

* * *

_**But my brain knows better...**_

Dr. Temperance Brennan was not just a bestselling author, though she did like to tout that point. She was also a highly regarded anthropologist. And not just any old anthropologist. Oh, no. She was a _forensic_ anthropologist. A woman of hard science. By way of the very nature of the study of anthropology, she was familiar with many religions and spiritual customs; and as an firm and devout empiricist, she didn't submit credence to any of them. No, if she were to subscribe to any formal spirituality, hers would be the altar of logic and truth; her psalms the the writ of Descartes, her readings from the work of the Vienna Circle.

In her world, every action and naturally, it's equal and opposite reaction, could be rationalized by a combination of chemical synapses as affected by environmental and chemical stimuli. Black was black, white was white, there was no room for an 'in between'. Black was the absence of light; white, it's overflowing counterpart. There was true, and untrue; yes and no. No space in her world for conjecture and guessing, no time to think with organs not firmly implanted in the cranium. If a man broke a law, that was bad; _he_ was bad. A child who kicked a dog or tagged a wall was wrong. In all honesty, it was a matter of great simplicity; it allowed her to do her job, and helped her search for answers.

So why was it, then, that rational thought failed her when it came to the questions she found weighing the heaviest on her mind, of late? Escaping the realm of her mental processes were the very questions that drove her to be her very best-- to not just write, but write with critical acclaim; to work on a team with one of the best close rates in FBI history: Who _was _she, really? Were her parents _good_? If not, what did that make her? Everything she'd ever known taught her that criminals were wrong, and wrong was bad. This gray area... it was not behooving her at all. And what would have happened if Russ had stayed? Her parents? What if she had known other family members?

Of course, by the time she had begun to allow such rambling 'what ifs' to float through her overpowered rational mind, her internal struggle intensified to gale force. Her logical self dismissed such rear-facing conjecture and worried those musings to be useless and base-- they served no purpose, held no truth, added no facet understanding to her life. The 'human' side of her, the heart to her logical brain (spurred into gear by one mister Special Agent Seeley Booth, naturally), tended to wonder-- well, just to wonder. How _could_ it have been? Who would she have ended up?

Oh, and _oh._ She couldn't even _begin_ to allow herself to fall into _that_ line of thought. Heh, _Seeeeeley _Booth. Oh, no, not that, not now. Ah, the science in her objectively found that philosophy is, well, best left to philosophers. And matters of the heart? Best left to heart people.

And with that thought, she figuratively stood and dusted herself off, and trained her thoughts back to science.

_Ah, the calming cool of truth and reason._


	3. It picks you up, and turns you around

**Well heeeeey, here I am, alive and well! Who knew? I didn't really leave much of an AN in the ficlet this morning as I was in a rush but here: I do exist, I have been able to get four more chapters of this bad boy typed up and will be editing/posting them as I go. I'm sure you loved the wait. This chap's a little longish; the next few notasmuch, but I put some love in. Cheers, and happy new season!**

**Disclaimer: You can believe me when I say creative control over any given television show is not something anyone should trust me with. That said, the horrific run ons and blathering overuse of commas is all on me, and any grammatical stupidities and pedestrian spelling mistakes are because I've typed this all on a laptop. I don't do laptops. (Yeeah, blame the damn computer.)**

* * *

_**It picks you up, and turns you around.**_

Had the very hand of God (_mythical_ god... _mythical) _chosen exactly that moment to appear, thereby proving his existence to our heroic young empiricist, her world, though invariably shaken, could not have possibly become bleaker. And then the ventilation and air conditioning failed.

She may not have believed in luck, good or bad, but her theories on jinxes were being sorely questioned at the moment. You see, according to Booth (with his investigative _expertise_), there is no such thing as coincidence. And at the precise moment that the air system went down, she had been thinking to herself exactly why her day couldn't _possibly _get worse. So, _logically_, if she had that thought, and immediately it _did_ get worse, jinxes were a definite possibility. Metaphorically speaking, she had found her 'hand of God'.

This, of course, created two new ticks against her temper: not only had the circulation and cooling failed, but she was forced to question either logic, or Seeley Booth-- yet she trusted both implicitly.

Now, the loss of the ventilation system would not have normally been such a critical issue (over short periods, of course) in the Jeffersonian Institution's Medico-Legal lab, for their subjects rarely held organic matter for long. But this morning, (_oh_-- this _morning_), it could prove disastrous. For, though the lab was not, in fact, a morgue, the current case left them with two fresh and fleshy corpses in autopsy and three more on their way in. And _since_ the Medico-Legal Lab was _not _a morgue, it goes without further explanation that the tissue on the bodies was not intact. In fact, while they had _much _more tissue than Brennan would handle, they still were far enough beyond recognition (they _were _sent to the Jeffersonian, after all), and were well on their way into the latter stages of decomposition; all were awaiting attention in Dr. Saroyan's _cramped _little pathology lab. A lack of air flow around five rotting corpses could prove stifling in the best of times, but add to that a recent heat wave and we find our squints scrambling for sanity, solace, and a breath of fresh O2 ('_Please, God, if you really __­_are _there...')._

The next very unfortunate part of our story is the bit where, as the bodies were found in a moldy, swampy basement, they carried on them a slew of microorganisms just waiting to burst forth and ruin someone's day. Not 35 minutes into the first examination the (_venerable_) Doctors Addy and Hodgins, in an attempt to uncover an odd bit of bone trauma to the cranium, managed to trip the biological contamination alarm, sealing tight and further stifling this prestigious institution. (If there's one thing never to do with a pack of sweaty scientists, it's lock them in a room together, _especially _with a few dead bodies.) Poor (dear, _unfortunate_) Zack was stuck in the back lab with a very edgy Hodgins, as it had been sealed seperately from the rest of the lab in an effort to keep things from further cross-contaminating. Hodgins was edgy only because Angela, who was extremely ruffled, had snapped at him in regards to the safety (or lack thereof) of an experiment-in-the-works, though his mood was furthered by the aforementioned alarm (which _he _tripped.) Poor Angela was miserable-- to both herself and others, because her brainchild, the Angelator, had been cruelly destroyed by a power surge from an incoming lightning storm. The offending storm, which would have been a godsend were the lab not sealed tighter than a pickle jar, not only took out the Angelator, but the lab's main power as well.

Now, all of _that _had actually occured about an hour and a half before the air went out, (and then, of course, the alarm tripped), and that hour and a half on generators was likely at least a partial cause of the loss of ventilation. The only good thing about it was that 'would have been a godsend' line, where maybe, just _maybe_, it would blow away that opressive heat and spare the lab it's slower, longer-term airborne warfare.

Not to mention, the loss of the Angelator (however reparable) happened to occur at quite literally the exact moment that the great machine was rendering the face of their first victim. So while Angela howled like a mother mourning her first born, Temperance Brennan just stood and glowered ('S_hall I believe in you _now_, Fate?'). _Unfortunately, her irritation found a home in the equally razzed face of one Dr. Camille Saroyan, who, for reasons previously discussed (reference paragraph three, wherein it is noted that there are two rapidly decaying humans in her lab, and three more en route, or simply, _"Yo__u want me to chill _how _many bodies on a backup generator?!", _and _"Why is this thing not up and running, Angela? We need to get a move on here!"_, to which Angela only howled some more), was furious.

Needless to say, everyone in the lab was irritable and touchy (barring Zack, of course, who didn't see the logic behind extreme emotion). The case was at a standstill, outside contact cut off, and the air was quickly becoming stale.

And it wasn't even 11 o'clock.

__

Between the warm, stagnant air and the decaying stench that permeated it, to take a breath inside the Medico-Legal lab was opressive. And that was just physically. The interpersonal tension, once you stepped inside, was thick enough to slice through lilke a brick of pure sodium (and thrice as combustible to boot). But none of this could even begin to disrupt the mood of a certain Special Agent (who absolutely _would_ have the kind of timing to show up at the _very moment_ the lockdown disengaged) as he burst through the pnumatic doors with a shit-eating grin on his face.

The place looked like a warzone. Red emergency lights overhead signified the generated power which was still limping along, flashing whites indicated the tail end of a bio-hazard containment. He jogged in, aware of the implications of these markers but unconcerned: to know that he wasn't the only one to have such a miserable morning, and that he'd never, _ever_ been so happy to be among squints was enough to keep that grin holding steady as he approached his partner's office.

"Bones. Bones! Bonesy-Bones-Bones... BONES! Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Bones! Oh, Boooooo----"

"_What_ is it _exactly_ that you _need_, Booth?" Oh, yeah. She was _pissed._

"Bones!" He rushed over and grabbed her shoulders, first pulling her to him then pushing her back; holding her at arms length and staring her down (considering, searching, investigating). In her stubbornness, she stared back; after a moment, their eyes met. A moment too long pushed it to awkward.

"Booth, what _are_ you doing, exactly?" She tried desperately to keep the ice in her tone (always an aggressive defense), but it kept faltering (as per _usual_, what with _Booth_ involved).

"Bones!" He grinned, a natural, entralled kind of goofy grin that he'd surely once used to charm the pants off a few unsuspecting young does, then pulled her back towards him sharply ('_Snap a girl's neck, whydontcha?')_, wrapping his arms around her in some odd sort of bear hug.

"Booth! What the hell are you--"

"Bones!" he yelled back, swinging her back to arms length ('_...and__ there goes my C2 vertebra'_), and considered her once more. "I'm just happy to see you. Can't a guy be--"

He didn't even have to finish his line before she lost the fight. Her shoulders slumped and her jaw relaxed, her eyes flicked away from his and her mouth broke into a grin. Looking back at him, she steeled herself for a last biting remark, "You know, I _r__eally_ think you needed more time with Gordon-Gordon."

A look of mock hurt clouded his face, but cleared as he remembered his mission. "The case, Bones! The case!! I got something! Let's go!"

And that, she couldn't refuse (_such a sucker_). Three hours of stress and bad luck; three hours of questioning the very core of her beliefs came down to a goofy grin and a childlike excitement radiating from a grown man (there's _no way_ that's right. That _can't _be right) washing it away like acetone on laquer. _Besides. The fates _must_ exist. That face could _never _lie to __me._

* * *

_**PS: anyone else a little miffed at "selfish Bones" last night? There's one S4 carryover I could gladly see go.**_


End file.
